


The Devil and Mr. Kaplan

by MJ (mjr91)



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: Backstory, Epic Friendship, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 09:38:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1184698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjr91/pseuds/MJ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I love cleaning up messes I didn't make.  So I became a mom." (Source unknown)  Mr. Kaplan sheds light on... Mr. Kaplan. Slight spoilers for 1x13 and some other first-season moments.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil and Mr. Kaplan

"I'm used to cleaning up your messes." Spoken more like a mother than a cleaner, although Mr. Kaplan is both. She's the best at what she does and she knows it. Part of her efficiency is that she is a mother, and that she's cleaned up truly incredible messes with less thanks and no pay. Another is that she is a mother, and so she's become, as a result, a slight, neatly groomed older woman, one whom you wouldn't look at twice, in a nondescript coat, with a large bag – she's one of a thousand women on any busy street, one who wouldn't be remembered after she passes by. Her large bag contains things most don't, admittedly – gloves, trash bags, small medical kit, small surgical kit, vials of bleach, detergent, and ammonia, and a gun, among other needs. But the small lady with the big bag is, like the mailman and the police officer, a sidewalk fixture, someone no one will remember passing by. Of such small things as her invisibility are reputations made.

They shake hands, and they kiss, with all due propriety, on the cheek. There's affection between them; anyone can see that. She's known him for years, though both prefer not to indicate exactly how they met. Some think that she knew him "before," that she was a friend's mother or older sister. Others who have noted her skills with bullet extraction think she was a nurse who was paid to dig a bullet out of him, and whom he liked enough to hire to work for him permanently. Another, smaller group thinks she was once far more attractive, though older than he, and that… something… passed between them once, friendship and loyalty on both sides having been exchanged to mutual satisfaction for a passing affair. Then there are those who are sure that's impossible – surely she's a lesbian, if indeed she didn't have a change of gender… why else MISTER Kaplan? And then, of course, there are those who whisper that she's HIS mother, that being the only possible explanation for such closeness. No one else dares to call him any pet names, yet he never flinches from hers.

The one thing all agree on is that Mr. Kaplan is Raymond Reddington's most loyal employee next to Dembe himself, and the one Reddington is closest to besides Dembe. Reddington's been found on the other end of a teapot from Mr. Kaplan, warm chocolate-walnut cookies on a plate beside the pot, apparently made by Mr. Kaplan's own two hands. Reddington trusts her, trusts anything she feeds him. Neither mistress nor mother, not his sister – their relationship is unclear, but its closeness and its intensity are unchallenged by anyone. Mr. Kaplan would take a bullet for Reddington, and it's possible he would be close to doing the same for her. Dembe has refused to imagine what would have occurred at the Post Office during Garrick's invasion had Mr. Kaplan been captured. It would have been no less than Reddington's reaction to Dembe's threatened death, possibly the same as his reaction to Agent Keen's. 

Clearly, it's not only the money. Clearly it's not just employer-employee friendship. Newton Phillips buckled under pressure. Mr. Kaplan, like Dembe and Luli, wasn't even approached. There's a bond between killer and cleaner that no one wants to touch. The people who might consider it know they'd die in the process. If Reddington didn't kill them, Mr. Kaplan would – Mr. Kaplan is not only thorough and efficient, but she is also dangerous. Wonderfully, effectively dangerous.

She is more than a cleaner. She is a confidant, one of Reddington's few. That she will never reveal what he tells her, he does not question. She gives him no reason to do so, pours more tea, listens. Where Dembe is friend and henchman, she is confessor and counselor as well as cleaner. And, just once or twice, a henchman herself – she is too small, too nondescript, too unlikely, and so makes the most perfect of hit men on certain public occasions. The woman one helps across the street after the shooting, the one who shakes in her shoes in terror, could hardly have been the one who reminds other hit men to use revolvers to avoid leaving casings behind.

If she is a mother, Reddington jokes to her, she is Ma Barker. Then they drink tea and eat cookies.

They leave any other discussion of her maternal concerns alone; there are lines they do not cross. Mr. Kaplan never asks about Reddington's family – although it's suspected she and he have exactly the same degree of knowledge about the situation. He never asks about her children, though he must be aware that she has them, now adults out on their own with not the slightest suspicion of their mother's real occupation. (She tells them that she takes care of the home of a businessman who's usually away on business. It's neither far from the truth nor at all close to it, but it works well enough as cover.)

Sometimes, not often but sometimes, Reddington confesses to her. Not his crimes – she knows them well enough anyway, sweeping up after as many of them as she has – but his thoughts. She knows how he felt about being at Annapolis. She knows how he felt about his first intelligence mission. She knows how he felt about his parents, about his wife, about his daughter. She knows about Sam Scott – their friendship, Scott's family, Scott's death. She thinks Reddington was right. Had she been Scott, she would have wanted a friend to do for her what Reddington did for him, though perhaps a bit less unpleasantly. She may ask Reddington to help her at that someday, though she thinks she would prefer something like cyanide in the almond crescents. 

She knows about Elizabeth Scott Keen. Because Reddington confesses his thoughts to her. 

She liked Keen when she met her. Young, a bit wet behind the ears, but competent enough. There's no substitute for experience, however; well, the girl will get that, certainly. Keen followed her orders efficiently, made reasonable and intelligent deductions. Yes, the girl's a federal agent, but that means nothing – Mr. Kaplan has seen more than enough stupidity in action, and has cleaned up after the results. Still, good head on her shoulders; she could go far. Reddington's probably right about her.

He'd been right, after all, to trust Mr. Kaplan the first time. He's trusted few others since, mostly when he's been out of the country and unable to use her services. However, she's good with the more common European languages, courtesy of years of Latin and French in school, and he's taken her with him a few times to see to arrangements. She's cleaned for him in England, France, New Zealand, and – really, you'd think it would be simpler to dispose of bodies in India, but it's not.

An FBI director? Cleaning up after his Fowler job took a bit of work. All those bullets to extract – thank goodness he'd remembered to use a revolver. No bullet casings to clean up. But the blood on the leather upholstery – to leave any or not? Mr. Kaplan hated leather furniture. Blood soaked right through the stitching and into the batting – horrid cleaning job, any kind of upholstered furniture, really. Still, one did have to shoot their opponent where they were, poor dear. He couldn't really have gotten her out of the house in her peignoir like that. Easier to take someone out in dark urethane. But he would get himself into little scrapes like that, wouldn't he.

She laid her magazine to the side. Enough review of forensic investigation updates for the day. Just perhaps – yes, chocolate-walnut cookies. It was that sort of day. That messy Julian Assange business could wait for cookies and a cup of tea. And today she just might bake enough for Dembe too.


End file.
